Challenges

It is possible to find the most delightful things in quite unexpected places.  A friend,  lives in deepest rural Gloucestershire where a local garage sells pasties.  Not unusual you say - doesn't every garage sell  cellophane wrapped parcels, high fat, low meat, together with a handy microwave heating service?  Yes but his garage sells Pasties, the real thing, crunchy pastry, proper meat, perfect seasoning and just enough vegetable to remind us that these were packed lunch for Cornish tin miners.  After my friend wrote about the pasties in his weekly newspaper column the pasties sold out in a week, the chaps at the garage were delighted.  

A week or two later The Writer was filling up his car when the garage proprietor wandered out and in the course of passing the time of day he mentioned how badly his forecourt was broken up by the recent hard frosts, at the same time he laid down a challenge.  "Holes!  I bet you couldn't write about holes, not as easy as pasties are they?"  A little ungrateful I thought and wouldn't have blamed The Writer if he had just paid for his full tank of petrol and forgot the conversation.  But not he, the next week a brilliant and witty piece appeared in The Independent.

I'm not about to write about holes or the produce of my local garage but I am still thinking about challenges while, for reasons I will give later, knitting some pretty straightforward stuff.   Like this scarf for DS1

K2 P2 rib scarf in two colours of  Rialto double knitting by Debbie Bliss

Last week I tried to rise to a challenge set by one of my twitter followers, @Kismetislander wondering in a tweet if I could combine marmalade and knitting.  I have to admit I dashed off last week's blog in great haste. My grandson was ill and became very seriously ill as the week went on, culminating in a lengthy emergency operation in the middle of Wednesday/Thursday night (he's on the road to recovery now).  All of which meant we have done a lot of anxious waiting around in hospitals, hence the plain knitting and The Little Model came to stay with us.  I had forgotten (how could I?) how time consuming 3 year olds are.  @KismetIslander was a bit underwhelmed with my efforts in answering her challenge.

I have also begun knitting a pair of socks in my favourite self striping sock yarn

I promise to do better at another time but also thought it would be fun if I were tested a little more.  I am delighted to say that I have around 400 hits on this blog each week so, I lay down the gauntlet to you.  Please leave a challenge in the comments section and I promise to rise to it.  I will also give your blog a big plug in my post (and set you a dare too if you like).

so much sock yarn

With so much sock yarn in my stash (some very special hand dyed) I have set myself the task of making as many pairs of socks as I can in 2013 but I look forward reading your ideas for new things to do and to scratching my head over the next few weeks

xx

C